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Talk:Dettlaff van der Eretein/@comment-91.67.95.240-20160727084255/@comment-27722422-20190321004832
@ Well, ‘Self-preservation is a basic part of any creature's thinking’, again it’s true, but I hope you won’t argue that nevertheless there’re the ones, who seek death and don’t want to live (suicide statistics if any doubts). Plus ‘sapient beings can understand that other creatures feel the same’ contradicts with Detlaff’s egocentric childish inability to understand the feeling of others. I think he can care only about those he personally finds emotionally connected with his pack-thing - that beast nature rules his higher vampire intellect, and he doesn’t think that only those people matter, he just instinctively protects them, while all others in best scenario are just not concern for him at all or even his enemies. Well, he’d be an idiot if we consider him being rational and reasonable adult human, who he is not due to his vampire nature (once again Regis was very human-like and socialized individual for his kind, while even he talked about his incapacity to assimilate into human society and understand them (us) completely). He likes Anna-Henrietta, children he makes toys for, but still doesn’t hesitate to attack the city, that thing is again more complex. But he shows remorse for the bruxae Geralt killed earlier. And we don’t have much time if any to dive into his feeling about that night - he is too obsessed with Sianna, and we don’t talk with him much. Also e.g. Regis with his own hands kills couple of bruxae at the end of the DLC (if Dettlaff dies) and doesn’t really care about it, though he can mind-control them and has no need to protect himself, because they couldn’t defeat a true higher vampire, The Unseen Elder also doesn’t care much about the deaths of the lower vampires like protofleders in his own cave - we can speculate and deduct higher vampires don’t really pay attention their lower brethren lives. Yes, immature, inexperienced, which doesn’t contradict the alien - he is an outsider and a freak to the world, of course, he is not sophisticated in social relationships. As I’ve mentioned earlier Dettlaff just kills them for the reason he finds enough to do so, their lives mean nothing to him, while he has no need to kill those men at all (the whole siege plan is quite nonsense taking into account his and Regis ability to turn fog and fly, and to become unseen), they don’t stand between him and his love (he again can use his super speed to get past them). He doesn’t hesitate (like Geralt with Roderick), doesn’t compare what is better and more rational, and more merciful (like The Witcher games player when deciding between lines of answers in a dialogue) just butchers them - they are only the way to achieve the goal. The same thing with the citizens of Beauclair. Well, in continental/civil/roman law which Poland by the way is a part of (of course with clauses and notions about the modern days mixture of law systems) pleas the way anglo-saxon law understand them are not used, and depending on the category of sanity (not sure about the terminology and translation of terms, under that I mean here legal capacity of a person to bear criminal responsibility) like full sanity, insanity, so called ’guilty but mentally ill’ or for instance the state very roughly translated as ‘age-related insanity’ (the situation when a person reached an age of responsibility but stunted still mentally healthy and therefore cannot completely understand the meaning of actions and control himself) a convict can suffer a punishment (examples 1 and 3), forced treatment (unsure about the term again, something like Involuntary commitment? Anyway, examples 2 and 3), socio-educational measures (example 4) - and they all are different independent institutions, ain’t parts of punishment (!) due to diverse principals, consequences and stuff. And the law was not applied to Dettlaff, he was considered a beast by humans, a witcher took an order, and he wasn’t granted the privilege to face a court and so on, of course mostly because of impossibility to bring him before a court. Yeah, English is much more polysemantic then many other languages) Not the motives but matters of sanity (see the definition before), Dettlaff is just to emotionally underaged to be tried in due process. He was dragged into human society by someone who unleashed him like a rabid hound - again true that we shoot or put to sleep these dogs, but as far he was a bit smarter then an animal we can try to understand what persuades him to do what he does. Never mind)